US House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) joins us for an update on the Trump-Russia investigation.
In this episode, Schiff responds to Trump's latest attack on him just this morning; and gives his views on the infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016 in which Don Jr., Manafort and Kushner met with representatives of the Russian government in the hopes of securing Russian help with the election; the possibility of Trump pardoning himself and others; whether Devin Nunes will be held responsible for his obstruction of the Russia probe during his tenure as House Intelligence Committee chair; whether Mueller's final report will be sent to Congress and made public; whether Mueller will be able to seek more perjury charges following the House Intelligence Committee's release of transcripts to the Special Counsel's office; and finally whether Schiff will run for president in 2020.
A few quotes from the interview:
SCHIFF RESPONDS TO TRUMP'S LATEST ATTACK ON TWITTER:
The President has had two years of a congress that would simply do no oversight whatsoever… And so the idea of meaningful oversight, of Congress as a coequal branch, clearly terrifies the President…. And in terms of what possible basis could that terrible Adam Schiff have for looking at my business, let me just mention one thing in the public view, something that is uncontested, and should alarm every American: During the president campaign, Donald Trump was pursuing what may have been the most lucrative business deal of his life, something that the Special Counsel’s office has said might make him hundreds of millions of dollars, this Moscow Trump Tower, this deal that had eluded him his whole career, and misleading the country about it. At the same time he was telling the country he had no business dealings with Russia, his organization was on the phone trying to enlist the help of the Kremlin to make that deal go through. There are also public reports they even offered Putin a $50 million penthouse in the tower as a way of greasing the deal. And at the same time, the Russians were seeking relief from sanctions worth billions of dollars to the Russians. Now that is pretty astounding. And the President’s answer to that is “hey, I might have lost my election, why should I miss out on making all that money? This is I think Exhibit A in why the country ought to be concerned that the President may be pursuing his financial interests, or driven by his financial interests, not the interests of the United States.
SCHIFF ON WHETHER TRUMP WILL PARDON EVERYONE, INCLUDING HIMSELF:
First of all, I think it’s a mistake to assume that the pardon power is absolute, it’s not absolute. None of the powers in the Constitution are absolute. And they’re certainly not interpreted in a manner in which you would void essentially, or negate, whole other sections of the Constitution by giving a certain provision a certain meaning. If you took an absolutist view on the pardon power, for example, it would mean the President of the United States could simply instruct people to violate the law, and if they were ever brought up on charges, pardon them. Now that, certainly, I think would never be the constitutional interpretation, and as one of our justices once wrote, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.” And if we were to interpret it that way, it would mean essentially the President was above the law in every way.
SCHIFF ON WHETHER HE'LL RUN FOR PRESIDENT
I am not running for president. Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I am simply too young to run for President, but I do appreciate the question. You know, I do get a fair amount of feedback from people who both say “I wish you’d run for President,” and who say, “I’m glad you’re not running for President because we need you to do what you’re doing right now.”
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